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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/29116470">Spiders in Suspension</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jacobi/pseuds/Jacobi'>Jacobi</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Captain America (Movies)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Anxiety, BAMF Natasha Romanov, Dressing Room Shenanigans, Nature, Nice ending I promise, Steve’s motorcycle, Therapy, domestic!stucky(in the end)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 04:40:50</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>4,410</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/29116470</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jacobi/pseuds/Jacobi</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>- "On three, we scream." Natasha's smile glints dangerously in the moonlight. It's reflected in Steve's eyes. They count down together and then yell into the dark. They yell until they can't anymore, and then they sit down and listen to the highway while the trees watch over them. Blond hair and red hair. Sunshine and blood. -</p>
<p>Steve and Natasha become friends almost accidentally. It’s a frightening thing, to look at another person and see your own anger staring back at you. To love them for it anyway. To love them for it because of it.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Clint Barton/Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes &amp; Natasha Romanov, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers &amp; Natasha Romanov</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>46</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Spiders in Suspension</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Hello! Been sitting on this one for awhile. I just love Steve and Natasha’s interactions </p>
<p>I hope you are all safe and healthy</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>  Natasha was old. She was old like Steve Rogers, a relic. A museum piece. The difference was, Steve Rogers was an artist when he wasn't Captain America. He sat with things for a while, watched them, came to terms with them. Natasha was nothing when she wasn't the Black Widow. How could she be? Natalia Romanova was never a real person. </p>
<p>  If Natasha stopped moving, she would die. She saw a therapist once. It did not go well. She did not go back. </p>
<p>  Steve Rogers sits next to Natasha Romanoff (so many variations of that fake name she was now supposed to identify with; that people now identified her with) in a hard plastic chair in the hallway of the VA where Sam Wilson worked. Steve rests the back of his head against the wall. Natasha jiggles her leg incessantly. If she doesn't stopped moving, she will die. Probably. </p>
<p>  Steve glances at her. "Feel like I'm about to get my hide tanned by the principal." </p>
<p>  Hides belong to animals, Natasha wants to say. Instead, she says, "I never had a principal." </p>
<p>  "Oh. Is school different in Russia?" Steve has big blue eyes and freckles. Still, after all this time, he has freckles. Natasha wants to choke him-no, no. No, there will be no choking. That's what Clint told her. </p>
<p>  "No." She says. "I don't know. I just never had a principal. I never went to school." </p>
<p>  "Oh." Steve says. His eyes momentarily snag on a man with dark hair walking by. Natasha hears his heart rate change rhythm. You should get that checked out, Natasha thinks, super soldier hearts shouldn't be that unreliable. She makes a mental note to tell Tony. Which really means, suggest to Jarvis to get Tony to spontaneously do a full body scan on Steve Rogers. </p>
<p>  "I was hand picked to be a Black Widow when I was a baby." Natasha keeps feeding Steve information to see how he will react. It's a game she likes to play with the men on this Avengers team. Director Fury keeps trying to pair her up with Steve. Natasha is worried that he suspects the truth: they are nearly the same age. </p>
<p>  "Oh." Steve keeps saying this. It's almost what Clint says when he's not really listening. Oh, no kidding? Oh, wow. Natasha starts cracking her knuckles one by one. "I heard if you do that, you'll get arthritis," Steve glances down at her. Even when he's sitting, he has to look down at people. "You think that's true?" </p>
<p>  Natasha can't tell if he is really interested in the answer or not. "Really? Should I stop?" She inspects her knuckles. They're fine. "I don't think I will. I don't think that's true." Steve leans closer to look at her hands with her. His body is warm. Natasha is not always comfortable around men, but somehow, inexplicably, she does not feel threatened by Steve Rogers. </p>
<p>  "I like your nails," He says, his voice carefully neutral. Natasha wants to kick him in the solar plexus, shake him up a bit. See what he's really like underneath all of his accommodation. "The color, I mean. Your nail polish. I'm not very good at it, even though I have steady hands...can't ever make it look even." </p>
<p>What? Natasha sniffs a laugh. "You don't need to be good at nail polish, Rogers. Just keep working on your push-ups." </p>
<p>  "My push-ups? What's wrong with my push-ups?" Steve leans away, brow furrowed. Natasha grabs his forearm. She grips a little too hard, and they both know it, but she doesn't know how to back out. She's already committed to touching him. She flips his big hand over, puts it across both of their knees and runs a red laquer nail over the callouses. </p>
<p>  "Nothing's wrong with them. How come your hand callouses but your scars heal smooth?" Steve has big hands, but they aren't shovels. They're curiously graceful, with elegant, strong fingers. Pianists' hands. Artists' hands. </p>
<p>  "You're not even gonna take me out to dinner, first?" Steve asks in a flat drawl. Natasha has struck a nerve. She has found a little bit of personality. She looks at him and he looks back.  </p>
<p>  "You're a fossil." She tells him. </p>
<p>  "Sure." He makes a fist with his hand and squeezes air, watches his own veins bulge. "You're my type of old, Natasha. You grab people too tightly. You know they'll die before you do." He looks her dead in the eye. Blue, blue, blue, and green. "But I ain't gonna die on you any time soon. I ain't gonna break either. You ever need somebody to grab too tightly, my arm's all yours." </p>
<p>  Before Natasha can reply, Sam sticks his head out of the doorway and smiles his gap toothed smile. He tells them to come in. He makes it seem like something they want to do. Natasha and Steve do not want to do this. They're only doing it so Sam will shut up, and they're only doing it together so they have one to back the other up and say, no, Sam, we tried that and it wasn't for us.</p>
<p>  First of all, Natasha cannot be convinced to sit in the chair with her name on it in the circle. Sam is not running the group, apparently, because it's a conflict of interest. Natasha doesn't know these people at all after he leaves, and she doesn't want to be here. She does not want to sit down. She does not want to- "It's 'cause of the door, the door's at her back there." Steve explains easily to the man trying to understand what Natasha is muttering in Russian (you little rat bastard, I won't be taken sitting down). </p>
<p>  They end up sitting next to each other. There are four other people who all also look like they don't want to be there. Natasha feels a fleeting sense of pity for the leader, which is a new thing for her, and must be because of Clint. Steve just sits passively next to her. Accommodating everyone around him. Not making a scene. You're a ticking time bomb, you're worse than Banner, you do not fool me. We're the same type of old. </p>
<p>  Steve does not move the entire time. Natasha is up and dragging him up the second the awful ordeal is over. She can't stand people crying. She can't stand it that she wasn't the only one ruined by violence. Steve seems unfazed by Natasha's sudden decision to be tactile with him when they've never really had a full conversation before. </p>
<p>  Natasha calls Steve at midnight. He answers on the third ring. "Get what you need for the weather and come outside." There's a fifty fifty chance he'll come. Natasha chooses heads and flips a coin, looking for movement behind the curtained windows of his apartment. The coin lands on tails, but it's a double tails coin from Clint's dollar store magic trick box. Steve comes down in a shirt that, for once and quite oddly, seems too big for him, jeans, and cowboy boots. One of his pant legs is half stuck in the top of the boot. Natasha looks down. "Yeehaw." She acknowledges. Steve shrugs. </p>
<p>  "Yeehaw." </p>
<p>  They take his motorcycle like it's a common thing for them to do. Natasha directs him toward a vacant lot of trees way past the city. Tony Stark owns it. He gave it to her, actually. Or, Pepper did. Same thing. Natasha takes his hand and they walk into the wooded property together. "Ready?" She asks. </p>
<p>  "Sure." Steve shrugs, seemingly game for anything. Fucking accommodationist. </p>
<p>  "On three, we scream." Natasha's smile glints dangerously in the moonlight. It's reflected in Steve's eyes. They count down together and then yell into the dark. They yell until they can't anymore, and then they sit down and listen to the highway while the trees watch over them. Blond hair and red hair. Sunshine and blood. </p>
<p>  "I have always had red hair." Natasha tells Steve. He puts his arm around her, because she is shivering. The shirt he is wearing smells slightly of somebody else. Natasha wrinkles her nose, bears her teeth- but no. Who could be bigger than Steve Rogers? Impossible. Maybe it's a different laundry detergent. </p>
<p>  Clint has to remind Natasha that sometimes people just smell different. Sometimes they choose different deodorants, perfumes, detergent, hand soap, and it isn't intent to deceive. They're just trying something else out. Maybe Steve is trying something else out. Natasha breaths out. "You never dyed it?" Steve continues the conversation. </p>
<p>  "Oh, yeah. I mean, I was born with blood red hair. It's not a myth. It's who I am." </p>
<p>  "Alright," Steve agrees easily. He does not seem concerned. Natasha can't decide if she wants him to be concerned or not. "I was not born like this." There's a chuckle in his voice and Natasha chases it. </p>
<p>  When Natasha checks the size of the cocktail dress she can't help but be surprised. It's nearly four sizes bigger than what they used to put her in when- Nat, clothes run all different sizes depending on who makes 'em and where they're from, Clint's voice cuts through. She swallows. She looks at herself in the mirror for too long, anyway. She has hips now. Breasts. She must be eating too much. Someone knocks and she doesn't care. "Come in." It's probably just Clint, anyway. And if it's not, she does enjoy making men uncomfortable. Poor Coulson. </p>
<p>  It's Steve Rogers and he's disappointingly businesslike about the whole thing. He's already got a com over his ear. He closes the door behind him. "You aren't going to apologize?" Natasha raises an eyebrow. </p>
<p>  "You invited me in." Steve counters. Natasha goes back to looking at herself in the mirror. She can barely see the outline of her ribs anymore. </p>
<p>  Steve crosses his arms behind her. "You're looking at it wrong." He says softer than he should. He takes the com out of his ear. </p>
<p>  "I'm getting fat. You don't need to gloss over it. But thank you." Natasha sighs, pulling on the dress. She does cut a stunning figure, though. She'll give herself that. </p>
<p>  "You're not," Steve insists. "You're looking at it wrong, I said. Flipping it. I'll draw you later, so you can see. I'll leave out the face." </p>
<p>  "What?" Steve says so many strange things for a man who runs a team. </p>
<p>  "I'll leave out the face. Just trust me. You'll see." </p>
<p>  Steve and Natasha increasingly find themselves in various states of undress around each other. Natasha doesn't mind it. She feels like a queen, walking into Steve's ready room unannounced, like she owns the place. She is always offered her own room. The only time she took it, there was a full vanity with head on lighting and that stupid, full length mirror. Now, she balances a compact mirror on her knees while Steve gets his suit on. If she needs to do her makeup, that is. </p>
<p>  Steve has freckles that hide in the shadows of his muscles over his shoulders. She likes to tease him about it. It's how she learns his mother was Irish. That he is first generation American. </p>
<p>  Natasha is perched on the sink, trying to get a butterfly bandage to hold her split eyebrow closed (she really does not feel like stitching it), while Steve showers off the dirt and blood and rubble. "Christ, I've got concrete in my hair." His voice echoes in the shower. </p>
<p>  "Told you, I almost put you in a nursing home with how grey your hair was." Natasha gives up on the butterfly bandage and starts helping herself to whatever Steve has in his toiletry bag, looking for skin glue. "So, I love Clint." She practices saying it out loud. It doesn't sound all the way right, but that's what practice is for. That's what Steve is for. Old like her. They scream in the woods at night and have picnics afterward. Sometimes Natasha holds Steve's arm so tightly he bruises. </p>
<p>  "Oh," Steve says. He drops something and Natasha hears it clattering to the floor. "No kidding?"</p>
<p>  Clint's trade mark I don't really care and I'm not really listening phrase. Natasha kicks the shower door. "Bastard." </p>
<p>Steve laughs. "You still going back to his place tonight, then?" </p>
<p>  "Of course." Clint's place, like Steve's ready room, belongs more to Natasha at this point. She finds skin glue. "Why? Should I not?" </p>
<p>  "Nah, just wondering. You gonna do anything about it?" The shower turns off. </p>
<p>  "Nope." Natasha pops the p. "Just practicing saying it out loud in case I'm held at gun point or something." </p>
<p>  Before Natasha goes to Clint's place, she sits outside the door of Steve's apartment. She has never done this before, surprisingly. She has never actually gone inside Steve's building. They have been teammates for three years, friends for half that time. There's another voice inside the apartment and she almost kicks open the door- but it seems like Steve is expecting this person to be there. What? </p>
<p>  A low whistle. "Christ, Rogers, I get it already, I can't compete with that." </p>
<p>  "Shut the hell up, this is for a friend." </p>
<p>  "So I'm not your friend anymore?" </p>
<p>  "You never once liked women, you godda-"</p>
<p>  It's another man. A laugh smooth and low and light. Natasha does not know what to do with this information. It feels private, special. Breakable. A baby bird in her hands that she should have left in the nest. She leaves. </p>
<p>  She and Steve sit next to each other on the Quin jet to Latvia. She double and triple checks her handguns and then checks over Steve's. She goes near Clint's quiver. He snaps his fingers: absolutely not! He signs her way. She holds up her hands. "Whatever." If she stops moving, she'll die. </p>
<p>  Steve pulls out a piece of paper when she sits back down and hands it to her. She unfolds it and stares at it. She likes Steve's art, and that's a genuine opinion of her very own. One of the few that she is alright with. This picture is the body of a woman. She looks like she lifts. There is muscle definition in her chest and arms. And her legs- Christ. The quads could kill someone. There's no face. She gives Steve a look. "Don't bullshit me." </p>
<p>  "You're bullshitting yourself. This is what you look like. A woman with muscle. You're not a ballerina, not a girl vanishing into smoke anymore, Nat. Your body needs to be able to take hits, to be able to stay in the fight and sustain it. This woman is just as capable as you were when you were starving. Only difference is, you're not walking around with five injuries all the time and ignoring them." </p>
<p>  "I wasn't starving." Natasha carefully folds the paper. </p>
<p>  "Yeah, you were. I know you were." Steve doesn't tell Natasha how he supposedly knows this information, but he sounds like he believes it's the truth. Who is Natasha to dispute that? She kind of wants to hug him and decapitate him at the same time. She settles somewhere in between:</p>
<p>  "Who do you live with?" </p>
<p>  Both of Steve's eyebrows raise slightly. They look at each other. "Ask me when I'm not Captain America." He says finally. </p>
<p>  They land in the middle of a firefight. Luckily, Natasha's body is strong. She breaks a man's neck with her legs. </p>
<p>  On December 25th, Natasha texts Steve: why did you leave the party? Everyone else here is boring </p>
<p>  Steve replies: gotta split my time between team and home, especially today. Come by later, tmr night. We can yell together, I'll bring a blanket. We'll take the truck </p>
<p>  Glass shatters. Thor laughs. Tony curses. Natasha types back: didn't know Christmas was so important to you </p>
<p>  I don't give a shit about Christmas, Steve says. Natasha can hear it in his voice and thinks about laughing aloud. </p>
<p>  On December 26th, Steve and Natasha take his truck to the woods. They usually take Steve's motorcycle, or a SHIELD car if they have to go somewhere for work. Natasha likes Steve's truck, even though he drives it like it isn't his. He always has to move the mirrors. When Steve parks and hops out to grab the basket with their hot chocolate in it, she does something she knows friends aren't supposed to do. She peeks into the glove box. There's a wicked looking knife with a beautiful black handle and some sort of science fiction paper back shoved in there. This is not Steve's truck. </p>
<p>  "Do you like knives?" Natasha asks. </p>
<p>  Steve glances down at her, her favorite expression of his-the amused side-eye- all over his face. It's messy, friendship. It's real. "I think they're useful, sure." </p>
<p>  "I mean as a weapon." </p>
<p>  "Not particularly." Steve admits. </p>
<p>  "Do you know someone who likes knives? As weapons?" Natasha clarifies. </p>
<p>  "Maybe." They stop and wait to set up their late night picnic until after they are finished yelling at the stars. There's a yellow sticky note with hash marks and symbols on it inside the basket. Steve smiles lopsidedly before crumpling it and shoving it into his jacket pocket. </p>
<p>  "What's that?" Natasha pries. </p>
<p>  "Code." Steve shrugs her off. Well, obviously. Natasha rolls her eyes. </p>
<p>  "Steve." She says his name. He has a resigned look in his eyes. Things always end in fights. "Stop accommodating yourself to be small around me." He blinks in surprise. </p>
<p>  "What?" </p>
<p>  "You accommodate and compartmentalize around everything and everyone until you're so small it's easy to lose you in a crowd. I'm tired of looking so hard to find you." </p>
<p>  He laughs, his breath frosting. "Look a little harder, Nat. You've got it flipped." </p>
<p>  "So draw it out for me." Natasha is half joking, but Steve takes out the crumpled sticky note and fishes a pen from his pocket. What kind of person carries writing utensils? </p>
<p>  He draws a big silhouette with a little stick figure inside. "I'm little on the inside. I accommodate to be big. Authoritative. Outgoing. Honest. Open. All of these things that I'm not around you. Truly, I'm hard as hell to hold a conversation with. I'm mean. I'm not accommodating for you, that's just my personality." </p>
<p>  "Oh." Natasha doesn't have anything to say to that. "So if you're Steve Rogers right now, then who do you live with?" </p>
<p>  "The love of my life." Steve evades. Rat bastard. </p>
<p>  Natasha stakes out Steve's apartment during their month of leave after a particularly trying mission because she gets bored two weeks in. Whoever lives with Steve somehow always manages to disappear with the entire truck when she looks away for a single second. She cannot fathom it. He reappears in the same manner. She knows he comes and goes, but never actually sees him do it. </p>
<p>  She falls asleep, because it's not actually a high stake mission. She wakes up looking at the toe tips of cowboy boots. Yeehaw? "If you wanna meet me so goddamn bad, ring the doorbell like a regular person, my god." The man standing above her takes a few steps back when she sits up and rubs at her eyes. </p>
<p>  Natasha is about to open her eyes and get a good look at the man when she suddenly remembers that Steve is her real live actual friend and claps a hand over her eyes. "Wait! Steve doesn't want me to know who you are!" </p>
<p>  "You're the best spy in the world, you can't just lie?" </p>
<p>  "I'm working on being a human being." It's the first time Natasha has ever said it aloud. Clint tells her all the time, it's okay, you're just working on learning how to be human. He tells her that it's okay very frequently. </p>
<p>  "Yeah," She hears the rustle of fabric, feels a shift in the air as the man sits down. "I get it. But you know me already." </p>
<p>  "I don't think so. I don't know many people in America." </p>
<p>  "We met in Russia. But I was a different person then." The man switches to Russian and everything clicks. She knows that intonation. Before Clint, there was only one other man who used to tell her it was okay. She keeps her hand over her eyes, but this time, it's because she does not want him to see hers. </p>
<p>  "Yeah," Natasha's throat clicks roughly. "I get it." </p>
<p>  The Soldier laughs deep and low. "I know you do. I look a little different now, I'm becoming James Barnes again. It's been two years and it's still hard as hell." </p>
<p>  "You just have to practice a lot," Natasha advises. "And you cannot hang on to past things, you have to keep moving." If she stops moving, she will certainly die. Instantly. Immediately. Painfully. She's already been still for too long. She drops her hand and stands up. The Soldier who is becoming James Barnes again is sitting cross legged in his cowboy boots that Steve throws on sometimes. His chest is broader than Steve's, but Natasha is already so familiar with both of their bodies in different centuries. He has his hair cut. He cocks his head and looks up at her.</p>
<p>  "You've been moving an awfully long time, little one," He says in Russian and English both. An accent that Natasha now knows to be from Brooklyn. Blue eyes with grey undertones. They are the same type of old. "You ever need to rest, our couch is comfortable." Our couch, he says. Ours. </p>
<p>  "I'll die if I stop moving, but thank you." Natasha tells him. </p>
<p>  "Being reborn ain't the same as dying, Natashenka. But, I don't blame you. It hurts a helluva lot either way." He leaves. Natasha watches him leave. He disappears as soon as she blinks, anyway. </p>
<p>  James Barnes appears wordlessly later on the same evening. "You shouldn't ever go back to the scene of a crime, James." Natasha let's him know. </p>
<p>  "It's Bucky if you know me. I'm not committing any crimes. Yet. Came to tell you to come inside." </p>
<p>  "Why?"</p>
<p>  "'Cause it's cold as hell and we spent way too long being cold as hell all the time, and I'm not leaving until you come inside." </p>
<p>  As Natasha begins to follow him, the first snowflake falls. It's nearly a blizzard by the time the potatoes are ready. Natasha watches James- Bucky. She watches Bucky. She watches him check his watch and sigh. "Watch this," He tells her. "He'll come in cold and covered in snow and say something about how he had to help some poor bastard who crashed their car on all the ice even though the police were already there." </p>
<p>  Steve does come in cold and covered in snow. "Sorry," He is also out of breath. "I saw a pileup and I had to stop, just to make sure they were okay. The police where already there, but I-" He stops abruptly when he registers that Natasha is sitting at their island, flipping through one of Bucky's car magazines. She wonders what it's like to have somebody know you so completely. She wonders if it bothers Steve, who seems to make a sport out of making himself difficult to know.</p>
<p>  "Hi." Steve says. Natasha glances at Bucky, who winks at her. It makes her feel special. Another place to take over. </p>
<p>  "Hey," Natasha says. "I never meant to intrude, but he invited me over." </p>
<p>  "You were casing the goddamn apartment." Bucky says flatly. </p>
<p>  "You're not intruding," Steve rushes to tell her. "I'm sorry I didn't invite you over sooner, I was just-"</p>
<p>  Natasha flips a page of the magazine to a beautifully restored thunderbird. "You were accommodating yourself and your personal life to be something that you thought wouldn't offend me." She shrugs. "Well, I must have forgotten to tell you: you piss me off all the time. Sometimes I pretend I am breaking your nose in my head. But, you never offend me." </p>
<p>  She watches Steve swallow. "Oh." </p>
<p>  Bucky leans against the island and points a lazy finger in Steve's direction. It's mettle. It makes Natasha's shoulder ache in sympathy. "You do accommodate for other people, cut that out already. You never used to do that." </p>
<p>  Steve kicks off his shoes and throws his coat on the rack by the door before crossing over to the kitchen. "Well I wasn't a national icon way back when, was I?" He digs his fingers into Bucky's ribs as he passes. "I'm starving." </p>
<p>  "Too bad, I heard national icons don't need to eat." Natasha watches Bucky kick Steve's legs out from under him and Steve catch himself on the counter. Steve swings a soft punch. He telegraphs the whole thing. Bucky ducks under it and kisses him on the lips. Natasha gets it: he's old like Steve. </p>
<p>  "Sorry I was late." Steve tells Bucky. </p>
<p>  "S'okay. Gave me time to round up your Russian friend." Bucky shrugs. Steve remembers that Natasha is there and apologizes to her. He doesn't look too sorry about anything. </p>
<p>  Natasha has to stay the night because of the storm. Steve is nodding off on the couch. Bucky is making a racket in the kitchen. Some hallmark Christmas movie is on tv (Bucky likes them). Steve wanted to watch Die Hard. Natasha gets up from the chair and stands over Steve. She kicks his leg. "Hey, wake up. I'm going to stop moving and I need you to dump my body in the bay." </p>
<p>  Steve jerks awake. "Not gonna dump your body anywhere," the frown line between his eyebrows is touching. Natasha sits down, grabs his arm, closes her eyes, and breaths out. She stops moving. She dies. </p>
<p>  In hell, one of the souls says, "She okay? Looks like she's gonna crush your arm." </p>
<p>  "She's alright. Just needs somebody who won't break, sometimes." Another soul replies easily. </p>
<p>  Natasha does not die. </p>
<p>  When she opens her eyes, Bucky is gone and Steve is still sitting next to her, almost politely. "I'm not going to be able to move again." </p>
<p>  "You're looking at it wrong. You've been frozen forever. You've actually just now started to move. To move on. Move forward. You flip things a lot, you know that?" </p>
<p>  "Oh," Natasha says. "No kidding?" </p>
<p>  Steve throws his head back like he's going to yell, but laughs instead. Natasha tips her head back, too. There's a spider on the ceiling. It falls from its web and hangs a moment, in suspension. Then, it starts moving again. No kidding.</p>
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